[for Mindy]

[so_catholic]

It’s nearing 6pm and thanks to a surprisingly discreet Amelia, Danny knows Mindy isn’t scheduled to be at the hospital tonight. So aside from a couple of sentences in the break room, that would mean they had gone a whole day without speaking to each other, even at work, and knowing that gives him an uneasy feeling that he can’t shake off.

It’s amazing how quickly Mindy can move when she really wants to. Danny’s been busying himself with paperwork for the past half hour, waiting for the sound of her office door closing, and as soon as he hears it, he’s up and out of his chair, satchel slung across his chest. He’s surprised that he gets out only just in time to catch a glimpse of her leaving the lobby. Usually she stops to regale the entire practice with stories from her day – the patient who she’s 99.9% confident will take her advice and name their son Thor, the injustice of receiving her lunch delivery addressed to Mr Lahiri simply because she’d ordered the 16oz steak, picketing Dr Fowler to change their wifi password to something she finds easier to remember (what’s wrong with taylor4harry4ever?! It has NUMBERS, Danny!) or her futile attempts to sell on whatever weird object she couldn’t say no to at the latest flea market she never meant to go to.

He misses it, all of it, and it’s why he races after her, calling out before she can disappear.

“Hey, hold the elevator.”

Comments

[beyoncepadthai]

"Yeah, I guess so," Mindy swallows, straightening up just a little but still leaning against him because she can't seem to not. It's not something she wants to dwell on, the way it had felt to tell a mother that her child hadn't managed to take its first breath, and so she manages a tight smile and looks back over to Danny once she's sort of pulled herself together. "So, things with Amanda...?"

[so_catholic]

As an OBGYN, it's all too easy to overlook the quiet wins every day – a healthy baby, a clear pap test, a benign cyst or lump. The losses are echoic though, running deep and causing sleepless nights. He understands Mindy well enough to know that 'I'm okay' actually means 'I will be okay' and he doesn't believe dwelling on it will help her get there.

Letting her into his orbit rather than shutting her out completely might. He doesn't think that through arrogance. Mindy's just the type of person who thrives on sharing and being shared with, so instead of shaking his head and reminding her they're supposed to be talking about her, he lets it loll back against the wall and gives her a look of excruciating pain.

"I've had my cellphone on silent mode for the past two days. She's...keen." He digs out his phone, which blinks at him – five new messages - and holds it out for Mindy to take. He can guess what they say without needing to read them - an entirely inane update about what's happened in the past half hour of her life.

[beyoncepadthai]

"Whoa, stalker much?" Mindy comments, taking his phone and reading the messages with a look of sheer disgust on her face. She's grateful for the distraction from what she's just told Danny, but even more grateful that he's still here. Even if he doesn't have much choice in the matter. Even if he's probably hoping that they're pulled out of their elevator moment right now so he can go back to his recycling... thing. "Danny, she has a cat. She has sent you several pictures of her cat. That should have been a sign to run for the hills immediately. You know that, right? No sane person likes cats."

She sighs and hands it back, then gives him a look. "You can't just ignore her, though, you know. You have to break it off or she'll be wanting to adopt a new furbaby together before you know it."

[so_catholic]

"She has three," Danny comments softly, his tone nothing to do with fond memories of Amanda and everything to do with watching Mindy's face as she scrolls through the texts. There's a sudden flicker of hope that she might get carried away in her curiosity and look back at old messages between him and her in New York. The only things that had changed when he arrived in the city were his number and the service, everything else remained - photos, conversations with people back home, just enough to keep him sane.

"I have broken it off with her. This is post-break up," he insists, taking the phone back and resting it in his lap . Okay, so what he'd actually done was ditch her at dinner a few nights ago, go to a bar to drink, and reel Mindy's very unpregnant pal into his giant charade. "Me, your friend, all the wailing and the panting. That counts as a break-up. She's just...y'know, she's slow at realizing." Hence the radio silence. An enduring tip from Peter Prentice.

[beyoncepadthai]

"Abandoning her to go deliver Elle's not!baby doesn't count as a breakup, Danny!" Mindy insists. She'd kind of wished that Elle had slapped him over that. There was no way that she looked pregnant. Not with all of that pilate crap she does and can't seem to convince Mindy to do. And never will. "You have to tell her it's over. God, do I have to do everything for you?"

She grabs the phone back, opening the message app and looking at him menacingly.

[so_catholic]

"Mindy," Danny warns, trying unsuccessfully to bat away her thieving hands before she even gets them on his cell. "Mindy! That is private property. A man's cellular telephone is a very private thing," he maintains firmly, his previous hope evaporating now he's faced with the real possibility that she might actually see something she shouldn't. His insistence climbs up a notch or two, hands groping for the device as he tries to get a look at what screen her prying eyes are on. "Mindy, I mean it--"

Fumbling fingers have swapped out the message app with the music one and now the unmistakable R&B rap intro to 'Try Again' begins to fill the elevator.

Danny gapes. That is so much worse.

[beyoncepadthai]

"Danny!" Mindy exclaims, eyes going wide and mouth broadening into a grin because oh, my god, so this is what he's been hiding all this time. Admittedly, it's a little dated, but it's still one of her favorite songs. "Are you kidding me? Are you trying to make me dance? Because this is the best song to dance to, you know."

She wrestles for the phone again, but only to turn the volume up.

[so_catholic]

"Don't dance, okay," Danny says quickly with a hand on her shoulder. "Just be normal." By that he means be subdued and understated, which is normal for him but an alien concept when it comes to Mindy. With the volume turned up, he can't even pretend to ignore the song anymore, and when the first verse kicks in he presses his thumb and fingers into his eyes and tries to forget every memory that's come flooding back.

[beyoncepadthai]

"Be normal? What does that even mean?" Mindy asks, though she ends up handing back his phone anyway, managing to hold back from dancing entirely but still rocking and back slightly to the familiar beat while it lasts. Even for Danny, this is an overreaction. Mindy's thrilled that he has an Aaliyah song on his phone, this makes no sense. "Do you have, like, 2000s R&B related PTSD?"

[so_catholic]

"It means don't make a big deal of it. Let it go." When Mindy eventually returns the phone, Danny switches the track immediately, less concerned with what plays next than he is with changing the conversation.

Bruce. Perfect. There's nothing like The Boss to turn a bad day good. "You can dance to this instead," he says, lowering the volume so that it's no louder than background music. He's not against the idea of Mindy dancing. Far from it.

[beyoncepadthai]

"You can't dance to Springsteen," Mindy laments. Or at least she can't. She'll never understand Danny's old man taste in music, but it is something she's come to suffer in silence by now. Almost. She still does sigh. "Do you think they're leaving us here on purpose? No way it takes this long to rescue the two of us."

[so_catholic]

"It's got dancing in the title of the song," Danny points out wryly, giving Mindy a look. He's pretty sure she could find a reason to dance even without one beat of music and she's just vetoing the concept because it's not from this millennium. "Like a trap?" He doesn't sound convinced but he does realize in that moment that neither of them have thought to ring someone for help. "Dr Fowler was wearing his lab coat inside out for half the day. You think he could set this up?"

[beyoncepadthai]

"He's like a thousand years old, Danny, I doubt that he has the wits about him to manage that," Mindy says with a shake of her head and, come to think of it, it doesn't bode well that he's doctoring around, still, if that's what she thinks. But anyway. That's an issue for another day. "I also doubt that he cares about us one way or another enough to have done that."

[so_catholic]

"Bruce is sixty four if he's a day--oh." Danny swallows the rest of his defense when he realizes Mindy's talking about Dr Fowler, lowering the finger he had pointed menacingly. "Yeah, he doesn't care. He still calls me Nathaniel."

[beyoncepadthai]

"He called me Mina the other day," Mindy shrugs. Better than Malfoy's Mandy, she guesses. Maybe. It doesn't bother her too much. He's a pretty good doctor, well known for his work, but she can tell that the women of Darrow are grateful for having some younger OBGYNs. "I guess we'll find out who's behind this when they finally pull us out. What else is there to talk about?"

[so_catholic]

"I don't think anyone's behind it," Danny replies, a touch of incredulity in the puff of laughter that comes out. "This isn't one of your crime shows, Mindy. This is just, coincidence or, the universe or whatever passes for one of those around here. This doesn't end with you slapping someone for making you miss a meal."

[beyoncepadthai]

"I would slap the universe if I could," Mindy muses, deciding against mentioning that not too long ago he was hell bent on blaming her for being behind this whole thing. It doesn't matter. If they want to move forward and maybe be friends again, she has to try to stop dwelling on the past. She sighs and peels open the wrapper of her candy bar. "I can't wait any longer," she laments, offering it to him, first.

[so_catholic]

"You've made it..." Danny turns his shoulders in towards her, checking his watch, impressed. "Twenty minutes. I'm rounding up." He lifts his gaze to her, no hint of sarcasm in his voice. "I'm very proud of you. Go ahead. You've earned the whole thing."

[beyoncepadthai]

"Thank you, Danny," Mindy says, surprised at the sincerity in his tone and not-so-secretly thrilled she doesn't have to share. She eats the candy bar happily, smiling over him occasionally.

[so_catholic]

Danny thought he'd seen the last of those smiles, if he's honest. If only he'd realized sooner that all it would take is declining half a Kit Kat bar to put that look on Mindy's face.

At the second or third glance from her, he feels sufficiently scrutinized into opening his mouth again, even though he's enjoying the quiet. But avoidance hasn't gotten him much so far; in fact, it's lost him more than he started with and Mindy deserves some kind of explanation. So it's with an uneasy bite of his lower lip that he says: "Listen."

The whirring that had died a death twenty minutes ago suddenly leaps back to life, metal grinding and pulleys straining as the elevator slowly awakens. "Listen," he repeats in an entirely different tone, looking up, too insecure to try and keep a hold of the moment. "Freedom."

[beyoncepadthai]

Mindy can be oblivious when she wants to be, but it's hard not to read a little more into Danny's expression before the elevator whirs back to life, even if she can't quite pinpoint it. It's just in time, too, the candy bar only a remnant of a wrapper, but she can't help but wonder whether and what all of this will mean for her and Danny's relationship from here on out.

"Thank god," she says, though it's with less delight than maybe either of them expect. Fighting aside, it's been kind of nice. Especially filling Danny in on the things that have upset her of late. Things that only he can really understand. "I was worried we'd have to spend the night here."

[so_catholic]

"Which one?" Danny asks as he climbs to his feet, slinging his satchel back over his shoulders and holding a hand out to help Mindy up. "You people worship dozens, right?" When the doors eventually ping open, his question is forgotten as he gawks at the figure on the other side.

"Dick?" The janitor stands there by his bucket and Danny automatically assumes the worst. He waves at Mindy to hurry up. "Oh boy. Come on, let's go, let's go, let's get outta here." He knew he shouldn't have confided in Dick but Danny is nothing if not a sucker for a fat guy with a mop.

[beyoncepadthai]

"What? Whoa, okay, slow down, speedy," Mindy says in spite of the fact she lets herself be dragged up and out of the elevator. It's a lot all at once and she has to pause to catch her breath, glancing over at Danny and wondering if it's an appropriate time to laugh, because wow. She's pretty sure this is a trope in at least five of her favorite sitcoms. "You think he's mad because you never thank him? You have to thank the janitor, Danny, even if we pay him."

[so_catholic]

"Huh? What? No, he had nothing--the elevator was an accident, the janitor had nothing to do with it," Danny insists, though he can't be certain. Either way, he still places a hand on Mindy's back to encourage her out of the building, just in case Dick gets any sudden urges to share.

"You okay getting home?" He asks once they're outside, brushing away remnants of the elevator floor from his jacket. Danny's very aware of what he'd said not too long ago. Technically the no personal chitchat rule is supposed to be reinstated now they're outside, but when faced with the reality of it, even he thinks a doorway, a few steps and a foot or two of sidewalk shouldn't hold that much power over them.